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Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and to agree very substantially with what she said and of course, the noble Lord, who made a strong case. I, too, commend the Minister because, as we have indicated in previous groups and as my noble friend said, the Bill may have had a pause, but the Minister did not. He and his officials have worked hard in engaging with us and with those who will be affected by it.

6.45 pm

Therefore, government Amendment 13, which we will debate soon, which guarantees the autonomy of regulators, has alleviated some of the concern when it comes to regulations being put forward for the regulators when there has a been a determination of unmet demand. However, there is still an area of uncertainty about how the Government will make the determination that there is unmet demand.

In October, when I was watching the Prime Minister on the telly, he said that the solution to labour shortages in this country is not to pull a lever to bring people from overseas into this country. We then got fact sheets from the department which said, “Let’s pull the lever to make it easier for foreign workers who we don’t have a mutual recognition agreement with to fill unmet demand.” Somewhere, both must be right, and this Minister has a much more nuanced position and his department has a greater view of reality that where there is demand for services part of the solution for that will be from those who have the same qualifications from overseas.

So, I agree with him, and it will be helpful, because every time that I am told that I am a remoaner who wants to open the floodgates, I will simply refer to the Professional Qualifications Bill and the methods within it. However, there is still an area of dissonance between what the Bill indicates and what the Home Office will be indicating for the shortage occupation list and the visas that will come with that. In the government fact sheet, which I commend the Minister for bringing forward, as he said he would, there is still no reference to the visa regime or the other elements that could be taken into consideration for determining unmet demand.

For example, and these may be two extreme cases, I had a look at the shortage list and there is an unmet demand for Gaelic teachers—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is not in his place—we do not necessarily need to take a day trip into the Highlands, but there is unmet demand for Gaelic teachers. I am not necessarily saying that that will be filled by those coming from afar, but, more tellingly, there is also an unmet demand for paramedics across all of the UK, and paramedics are on one of the shortage lists. Certainly, where I live, north of the border, the lack of paramedics is a critical issue at the moment. It is literally a life and death situation in Scotland.

I cannot understand why the Government cannot have a straightforward situation so that professions under a legal regulator can be consistent with the shortage occupation list as far as visas are concerned. Unless the Government and the Minister are willing to say that they are going to bring this together, one part of the Government is saying, “We will put you on a shortage list to allow you to get an emergency or a specific visa to come and work here, but you are not necessarily on the list that says that we will recognise your professional qualification”, and vice versa. In many cases, it would just make absolute common sense if one part of the Government says that there is unmet demand.

Of course, there are other elements, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness indicated, such as geographical factors and market conditions, as far as demand is concerned, and it would help if the Government were able to indicate what they may be. It is not too late for the Government to do so, and it would be very helpful because this inevitably will be a high-profile and potentially controversial area when it comes to regulations being brought forward to allow those from overseas to work in the domestic market.

When the factsheet on unmet demand says that

“there is insufficient provision of the services of a regulated profession and consumers have to wait longer or pay more for those services”

without there being any clear definition, many consumers will say that pretty much all their services at the moment fit into those categories. If you are a consumer having to wait longer for your energy provider, or any others, and are having to pay more for those services without there being baseline information or a proper market assessment, ultimately the free hand of government to make the decisions about what is unmet in that consideration is very broad. The case for these amendments, which on one hand remove some of the specificity, in that of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley,

but also add a degree of clarity, in the second amendment, have merit. I hope that, at this late stage in the Bill, the Minister is able to give more clarity from the Dispatch Box.